{"id":2253,"date":"2013-09-20T13:56:53","date_gmt":"2013-09-20T13:56:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/transculturalwriting-archive\/?p=2253"},"modified":"2013-11-26T15:37:53","modified_gmt":"2013-11-26T15:37:53","slug":"mexico-2013-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/transculturalwriting-archive\/mexico-2013-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Mexico, 2013: Alejandro Reyes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Second Encounter: Alejandro Reyes\u2019 La reina del cine Roma –<\/em>\u00a0A Transcultural Language of Resistance<\/strong><\/p>\n

Our next stop is San Crist\u00f3bal de Las Casas in Chiapas, in the South of the country. We take an overnight bus from Mexico City and then a taxi into this beautiful colonial city with its pedestrianized centre and the raised sidewalks.*<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll leave you for a moment in front of one of those lovely shops. No, not to browse. Turn your back towards the street, close your eyes, count to ten.<\/p>\n

One \u2013 two \u2013 three \u2013 four \u2013 five \u2013 six \u2013 seven \u2013 eight \u2013 nine \u2013 ten.<\/em><\/p>\n

Open your eyes and look straight across the road at the caf\u00e9 on the other side.<\/p>\n

What do you see? A stream of people wanders by, many of them tourists. Street vendors \u2013 many of them children, all of them indigenous \u2013 offer their bracelets, belts, rebozos (shawls), separadores de libros (bookmarks). Yes, and what else do you see? Nothing out of the ordinary? Exactly. Look at the g\u00fcerita (blondie) sitting in the caf\u00e9 across the road, sipping a caf\u00e9 con leche and reading a novel. Take a snapshot. Print the picture, put it in a frame and title it \u2018Privilege.\u2019<\/p>\n

Yes, it\u2019s me. Have a seat. Join me.<\/p>\n

Two little girls are offering bracelets for sale. I say No. One of the little girls doesn\u2019t want to give up so easily. They hang around for a bit. I have put the novel down on the table. Suddenly I have a little ponytailed girl leaning on my armrest. A curious little index finger wanders to the first, yellow letter of the title.<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 – \u00bfQu\u00e9 dice eso? (What does this say?)
\n–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 – Eso dice \u00b4La\u00b4, I explain. (This says \u00b4The\u00b4)
\nThe little index finger wanders to the word below. It\u00b4s green. She points to the first letter.
\n–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 – \u00bfY eso?
\n–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 – Es una erre. (This is an \u00b4R\u00b4.)
\n–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 – \u00bfY todo? (The finger follows the whole word)
\n–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 – La palabra es \u00b4Reina.\u00b4 (Queen, for the English speakers)
\nNext line. Two words. The first in orange letters, the second in purple.
\n–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 – \u00bfY qu\u00e9 dice eso?
\n–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 – Eso dice \u00b4del cine\u00b4. (of the cinema)
\n–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 – \u00bfY todo junto?
\nThe little index finger follows the whole title.
\n–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 – La reina del cine Roma. (The Queen of Cinema Rome)
\n–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 -\u00a1Ohh!<\/p>\n

\"posters-girl\"<\/a>She looks me straight in the eyes and gives me the biggest smile. Something marvelous just happened. I don\u2019t know what it is, but she does. She exchanges a few words with her little friend in an indigenous language, and the two run off.
\n***
\nLa reina del cine Roma<\/em> (The Queen of Cinema Rome<\/em>, http:\/\/lareinadelcineroma.blogspot.com<\/a>) is a novel by Alejandro Reyes. We\u2019re meeting Alejandro in Tierra Adentro, just down the road from the caf\u00e9. \u2018Tierra Adentro\u2019 means something like \u2018land inside\u2019 or \u2018earth within.\u2019 In this building with a large patio several Zapatista co-operatives have shops and a caf\u00e9.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s role-play. You\u2019re your version of the little girl who sells bracelets in the street. Your vivacious curiosity guides your actions and attitudes and overrides your sense of duty, obedience, or etiquette. You realize that Alejandro has a very good story to tell \u2013 but you don\u2019t know how to read it, so you have to ask questions. I\u2019ll be your prompter, in case you get stuck.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the story with La reina<\/em>? It\u2019s Alejandro\u2019s second book, published after the short story collection Vidas da R\u00faa<\/em> (Lives from the Street<\/em>). The stories and the novel are set in Salvador de Bahia in Brazil. In La Reina, Alejandro tells stories about dignity that comes from the embrace of identity even when it\u2019s difficult, from the tenacious commitment to love in a situation that has been created to annihilate the very possibility of dignity and love. It\u2019s a novel on children who live in the streets and don\u2019t have parents, or their parents abuse them or are unwilling or unable to protect them from abuse. Betinho and Maria Aparecida, Creuza and Chico, are the \u2018marginal\u2019, those who the Zapatistas call \u2018those from below\u2019 \u2013 marginalized, pushed out, stepped on because of class, race, gender identity, sexuality. Who are the \u2018marginal\u2019 and \u2018those from below\u2019? Alejandro explains both these terms in the audio of the same title.<\/p>\n

Reyes Marginalities and Those from Below<\/a><\/p>\n

But how and why, you may ask, did a Mexican who was born and raised in Mexico City, emigrated with his family to San Diego at age 15, got a degree in Computing and worked in Silicon Valley for five years, and then went backpacking for another five years across the Americas, to Asia, and to Europe, with a long stop-over in Paris \u2013 how and why, you may ask, did Alejandro Reyes write a novel in vernacular Brazilian Portuguese, set in Bahia, and on the marginal in a country that isn\u2019t even his? Alejandro says that Bahia \u2013 where he arrived in 1995 \u2013 and the children in the street inspired him; that it was about the oxymoronic co-existence of violence, pain, and beauty. And there is a sensitivity for \u2018other\u2019 realities, solidarizing oneself with those who produce literature against the grain, and for experiencing the Self as Other.<\/p>\n

Reyes La Reina del Cine Roma, Other Realities, and the Self as Other<\/a><\/p>\n

\"solidaridad\"<\/a>What is he talking about in the end of the audio? 2006? The Zapatistas and the way they see the world? Don\u2019t rush. Imagine one word in purple and one in bright orange. Now delight in the colours. Don\u2019t get ahead of yourself. We are in the early 2000s, when Alejandro returns to San Diego for an M.A. in Latin American Studies and then starts a PhD on marginal literature at Berkeley. He\u2019s also collaborates with the Radio Zapatista collective.<\/p>\n

In 2006, during the Zapatistas\u2019 other campaign, he travels with a friend by motorcycle through Mexico, following the Zapatista delegation and doing radio reporting on the collectives that participated in the other campaign. But as I mentioned in our \u2013 yours and mine \u2013 preparation for this journey, other things also happened in 2006 \u2013 and the year became a watershed moment for Mexico. In the audio 2006, Alejandro talks about how these experiences shifted his attitude to literature and to the political subject.**<\/p>\n

Reyes 2006<\/a><\/p>\n

After 2006, Alejandro completes his PhD and moves to Mexico City in 2008. He works with the writers\u2019 collective emerging from the \u2018Basement of the Forgotten\u2019 in Tepito in Mexico City, and edits with them the collection Netamorfosis: Cuentos de Tepito y otros barrios imarginados<\/em> (I\u2019m sorry but translation doesn\u2019t work for this title. La neta you\u2019re going to have to learn Mexican Spanish). He also completes a theoretical work: Vozes do Por\u00f5es: A literatura perif\u00e9rica\/marginal do Brasil<\/em>, published in 2013 (http:\/\/vozesdosporoes.blogspot.mx\/<\/a>). He now lives in San Crist\u00f3bal, and continues to be a literary and cultural translator:<\/p>\n

Reyes TRANSLATION, LITERATURE AGAINST THE GRAIN, AND THE POLITICIZATION OF DIFFERENCE<\/a><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take a last wander around Tierra Adentro, before we leave. Apply what you\u2019ve just learnt. Read the space otherwise. Politicize difference. Start by stopping to do what you may be used to doing: don\u2019t block out all signifiers that don\u2019t refer to food, drink and service, even though this is a restaurant; don\u2019t turn out the manichaestic skeptic and conclude that resistance is impossible because even here they sell things***. Look at the murals and the posters and ask questions. As you have a look at the shops, be open to sensing in every T-shirt design, in the texture of every scarf, in the embroidery of every blouse, in the stitches of every leather bag or boot, the Zapatista effort that goes into building an alternative to the SafeSide. And when you look at the denunciations of the paramilitary attacks, you sense that those who want to keep the SafeSide the only option, respond with visceral hatred and fanatic determination.<\/p>\n

Can I clarify all this talk about the Zapatistas? Wait until we get to our next stop. For now, put together the spatial experience of Tierra Adentro and the textual experience of La reina del Cine Roma<\/em>. Listen otherwise: to the vernacular as it remakes literary language, to the oral that liberates the written word, to the silence of a language that refuses to turn violence into spectacle.<\/p>\n

Sense the presence of the alternative that has been rendered absent?<\/em><\/p>\n

Hear that interference? Those are the crashing and crushing steps of the SafeSide Private Security Squad, marching in to liberate you from the marginals, from those from below.<\/em><\/p>\n

Starting to feel spooked out by what you aren\u2019t supposed to perceive while living on the SafeSide?<\/em><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t withdraw inside yourself. Don\u2019t pull out your crucifix. Don\u2019t hide under the covers with a flashlight and your favourite Romance novel. Don\u2019t clamber onto the pedestal of status and pronounce from underneath your critic\u2019s hat.<\/em><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t shut down; intensify. This is a transcultural language of resistance. Listen otherwise. Think through your privilege. Become literate in resistances. Learn how to trace dignity and nurture it.<\/em><\/p>\n

Listen otherwise.<\/em><\/p>\n

Listen more. Listen deeper.<\/em><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t move upwards. Move downwards.<\/em><\/p>\n

Downwards.<\/em><\/p>\n

Further…<\/em><\/p>\n

Now<\/em> is your moment to look Alejandro in the eyes and give him your biggest smile, and to let him know that something marvellous has just happened.<\/p>\n

* In raining season the streets turn momentarily into little rivers. This is why the white inhabitants and the mestizos had raised sidewalks to walk on. The indigenous people had to walk in the street. Rosario Castellanos wrote marvellously on this type of cultural encounter, and a collection of her short stories set in San Crist\u00f3bal have been translated into English as The City of Kings<\/em>.<\/p>\n

** Alejandro mentions San Salvador Atenco. For a video on what happened there, you could watch Romper el cerco<\/em> (Breaking the Siege<\/em>) by Nicolas D\u00e9foss\u00e9 and Mario Viveros. Or you could read the chapter \u2018The State of Law\u2019 in John Gibler\u2019s Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt<\/em>. To understand the dynamics of the other campaign, view Nicolas D\u00e9foss\u00e9\u2019s documentary \u00a1Viva M\u00e9xico!<\/p>\n

*** The term \u2018manichaeistic skepticism\u2019 was coined by Nelson Maldonado-Torres in his article \u2018On the Coloniality of Being\u2019, Cultural Studies<\/em>, 21:2-3, 240-270.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Second Encounter: Alejandro Reyes\u2019 La reina del cine Roma –\u00a0A Transcultural Language of Resistance Our next stop is San Crist\u00f3bal de Las Casas in Chiapas, in the South of the country. We take an overnight bus from Mexico City and then a taxi into this beautiful colonial city with its pedestrianized centre and the raised… Continue reading Mexico, 2013: Alejandro Reyes<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2270,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,68,13,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","category-mexico-blog","category-news","category-writing","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/transculturalwriting-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/transculturalwriting-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/transculturalwriting-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/transculturalwriting-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/transculturalwriting-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2253"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/transculturalwriting-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2312,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/transculturalwriting-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2253\/revisions\/2312"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/transculturalwriting-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/transculturalwriting-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/transculturalwriting-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/transculturalwriting-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}